Chapter 2 Distress Call

My Merlin entered the docking bay on autopilot and I started running the checklists to disconnect myself from the pod. The checklists are fairly complicated, but after you have done them a few hundred times it moves pretty quick. One thing I learned as a pirate is to not only run the checklists to get myself disconnected from the pod but also run all the ones I can for reconnecting when I come back. It is kind of like cocking a gun if you will.

By the time the dock sequence was complete I was disconnected and waiting the two minutes for the pod to power down and let me exit. While I waited, I wondered what kind of trouble Tasha was in this time. Last time she was on some backwater moon, was lonely, and decided I was her best friend again. She gave me some bullshit excuse to get me there. Of course, I came running even though I knew a week later I would be old news and crushed yet again. I have never understood how I pick who I love or am loyal to. But once I pick it seems I can never let it go even if it is to my detriment. Glutton for punishment I guess.

The pod released me and I stepped out into the bright lights of the landing bay. A cheerful maintainer robot rolled up to my ship and evaluated the damage. I followed it around noting scorch marks along the afterburner and multiple chunks out of the visible armor.

“It seems you have damaged your ship pilot Nachthexen,” he chirped out as though it would be news to me.

“No, shit. You think you might be able to fix it?”, I said with as much sarcasm as I could muster. The sarcasm was lost on the robot, but it made me feel better anyway. Taking it out on the junk pile verbally was also better than getting in trouble for blowing up another Mx robot. Damn things are expensive.

“Yes pilot Nachthexen I can fix it right away, but I am afraid your afterburner has completely seized. Would you like us to replace it with one from your hanger?”

“No, I will fix it myself,” I said as I walked away in a huff. Thank goodness for a little skill with nanite paste.

I walked through the empty halls toward my office. I passed several now vacant rooms as I went. Echos filled the corridors with each step. It really made me sad that there were so few of us left. I guess that is what happens when you try to keep a group of women pirates together. Eventually, everyone will need to go off and do their own thing. It was just a matter of time before they came back, at least that is what I kept telling myself.

My office looked like someone had broken in and trashed the place. Just like I left it. I've never been the most organized person. The fact that I was keeping what was left of the corp in one piece was amazing. I could barley keep track of myself, let alone corp bills and diplomatic issues. My life was a mess and it never seemed to get better. Self-induced no doubt. I was very thankful for the Hellhounds who were sticking with me through all of this. If they hadn't, I'm sure the Hellcats would have fallen away already.

I walked over to my desk and melted into my chair. The last few weeks were so tiring, and nothing to look forward to but more of the same. The message light was flashing on the communications panel. I was dreading making the call back to Tasha, so I scrolled through the various status reports. It seemed like Evi was still causing all kinds of chaos in Lis. Seven ships destroyed in two days. Pretty soon she would have Lis and the surrounding systems under HellFleet control. I shook my head and smiled, she had defiantly earned the second in command role. I desperately missed her being around though.

The two remaining messages were bill notices for corp offices at places I never heard of. I had no idea If I should pay them or let the rent expire. I finally just said fuck it and let the offices expire. I really didn't know why I was so hesitant to make these decisions. The fact was, I was CEO and no one was coming back anytime soon to change that. I really should start running things the way I wanted instead of trying to figure out what others would have done in my place.

The messages were gone and I didn't have any more excuses. I sat there for another minute or two trying to remind myself that Tasha was sometimes not that good of a friend. She was self centered and had a bad habit of using me. She also liked to skew the truth to fit the reality she wanted to see. I would never call her a liar, but to an outside observer it might seem that way. All I had to do was call her back, remember she was my friend, and be willing to listen. That would be good enough.

I logged onto the communications band and input her number. After about a minute her image appeared in the view screen. She looked really good...and pissed.

“What the hell was that all about? I call you and tell you I am in trouble and you disconnect,” she said so low I could barley hear her. She was cussing, she must be really pissed because that was not how she normally handled things. I just gave her a big smile and tried to remember that I was here to be her friend.

“Well?”, she said and I could visualize in my head her foot stomping the ground. It made me smile again, and that got me another mean look.

“I was in the middle of a little business hon. Now what kind of trouble are you in this time.”

Reminding her that she was in trouble seemed to calm her down. I could swear she even blushed a bit. She always liked to be in control of herself. She fancied herself as a logical scientist who wasn't burdened by strong running Caldari emotions. It made her mad when people saw her get emotional. She took a deep breath and quickly pulled herself together. It hurt a little because I use to be one of the few she would let see her that way.

Tasha and I had gone through pilot training together. She was already a brilliant scientist when she showed up for training. She really wasn't cut out for being a pod pilot. But she was ambitious and saw the ability to freely move around space as the key to finding what she needed to pursue her research. She had dreams of research labs and mining operations whose only purpose was to feed her research.

The only problem was she was a horrible pilot. I probably wouldn't have even noticed her but the instructors paired us up hoping I would be able to help her through training. She and I hit it off. I'm not sure why, because we had very little in common. But she had such drive to succeed and a love for life that I was missing that it made me feel good to be near her. We were inseparable the rest of the time and we both managed to get through the program.

She talked for about thirty minutes. I wasn't really sure what parts were true and what parts were skewed to make her story a little better. Basically, she had joined up with a scum bag Caldari business man named Geklov Barkly. She had made a breakthrough with her research and he had promised, for a small fee, to get her the research labs and materials she needed to finish the project.

Geklov arranged blue status with a null sec alliance. Then he moved his entire corp to a little system deep in 0.0 and set up everything for her. She had borrowed a lot of money to make this happen. Now, a fleet of enemy ships were holding the system hostage and threatening to blow up all of the research labs and kill everyone if they didn't pay them billions in ransom.

Her story seemed to be lacking details. But that didn't surprise me since she was so oblivious to anything going around her that did not involve her research. You could also say she had a pretty sheltered life. I was the only pirate she knew and she did her best to tell me how disgusting my life was every time she saw me. Funny, now she was calling me to help deal with the pirates.

“Laka, please come help us. I owe a lot of money. They will kill me,” she spoke this time without holding back any emotions. She was really scared, and to see it on her face was like a knife in my chest.

“Okay, I will be there,” was all I could say.

“Please come quick,” she said, and the com link terminated.

I was going, and I knew I was going to regret it.

Chapter 1 Botched Ambush

I watched Tyler jump from the top belt to the second about twenty times in the last twenty minutes. He got impatient about 10 minutes into the little dance and started spewing out expletives on the local comm frequency. I was sitting at a safe at the sun working on corp business while I watched his little show.

I didn't really have time to teach him a lesson. But he was starting to really annoy me. He couldn't have been out of capsuleer school any more than six months. He had been in and out of system for the last week trying to make himself famous, I guess.

I picked him out on D-scan as soon as he came into the system. Warping to 0 at each belt looking for me. I don't think he really got pissed until he hit every belt and couldn't find me. It was obvious he spent most of his precious few months as a pilot in high sec. Probably running missions for dirty backstabbing agents while he honed his über battle skills. I have seen his kind a million times down here.

He was in the usual, a Rifter. Probably the finest Minmatar ship ever built. Many of my friends fly Rifters and they are devastating in a fight. Flip side of that is you can take a new capsuleer, put him in a Rifter with a point and unleash a ridiculous amount of havoc with very little training time. It really makes me a little sick to think about it.

I generally stick to Caldari ships myself. Mostly, because people underestimate them but also because it takes quite a bit of skill to fly them. Ship snob? Maybe, but there is nothing like engaging a target and tanking twice the damage they expect you to while melting their armor around their pod. Sure, I lose ships to some of the more experienced pilots because I am so stubborn about what I fly, but I get a whole lot of satisfaction out of sending anyone to the clone vat in a ship they never expected to stand a chance.

I paid off the last of the corp bills and decided to teach young Tyler a lesson. I relaxed and let all of the data the pod was feeding my mind come to the front of my consciousness. Many people can't pilot a pod. First, you have to get use to being in a confined space and plugged into a machine that takes over. Second, you have to be able to keep your sanity and sense of self. After all of that, you have to be able to enforce your own will on the machines while absorbing all of the information that is streaming through your head.

I could feel the ship around me. Each component sang out waiting for me to command it to function. I concentrated on the sensors and I could see in my mind the the entire system. The pod is an amazing invention. It can make you feel like a god. Which has been the end of many a hopeful pilot candidate. I had a friend manage to figure out a way to fly himself into a sun during pilot training. Sure, the systems shouldn't let you do that, but there is still much we don't understand about this gift from the Jovians. Apparently, clone technology has not evolved to the point where data can be retrieved from a pod lost in the middle of the sun.

I waited for the Rifter to warp from the top belt to the next. I concentrated on the top belt and engaged my warp drive. I could feel the capacitor's power slam into the large warp engines just as though it was slamming into me. The ship shuddered in anticipation as it accelerated to warp velocity. God, it felt good.

I came out of warp at zero and started looking for an asteroid I could use as a trap. He was averaging about one minute at each belt so I had about forty seconds before he would be back. I found one off the port side and sent the command through the pod to the afterburners. The capacitor kicked in again sending a low pulsating stream of energy to the Cold-Gas Arcjets, or maybe it was into me I couldn't tell anymore. My heart rate and my breath became uneven as I maneuvered the ship around the back side of the asteroid waiting for the Rifter to return to the belt.

I was one with my ship and with the space around me. The thrill of the hunt and power of the ship washed over me in waves. I was just waiting for the combat to push me over the edge, like it always did.

I waited, adrenalin pumping, 20 seconds. Then I noticed a convo request that the pod had placed somewhere in the back of our mind. It was waiting with all the other irrelevant data at the time. I normally would ignore a convo at a time like this, but the request came from Tasha, a close friend from pilot training. She rarely made it a point to get in touch with me. If she did it was important. 10 seconds.

“Hey, Tasha, kind of busy at the moment,” I said while trying to calm my breath a little.

“Laka, I need your help.”

That really didn't surprise me. I loved her to death, but she was needy and only really came to me when she wanted something.

“Laka I am in big trouble..”

Right then the asteroid vaporized around me as three linked auto cannons tore through it. The shipped yawed to the left as it was pushed away from the rock by the impact. Alarms screamed in my head as damage reports came flying in. I engaged the thrusters trying to bank the ship back toward the Rifter to get it in blaster range. The Merlin auto target cycle finished just as I accelerated out of the debris field. I pulled the ship hard, looping around to bring my guns on the Rifter while I scrammed his warp drive and hit him with a web.

The navigation systems told me that they could no longer be used to jump into warp as Tyler pointed me. Then the web. All I can say about being webbed while in a pod controlled ship is it is disturbing. The ship shakes and it feels like you are going to be crushed by the energy coursing around you. If you are a bit claustrophobic there is no chance you are going to keep your mind.

I engaged the afterburner tying to overcome the effect of the web. I could feel his auto cannons picking away my shields. I tried several angles but I couldn't get range on my blasters. All I could do was let loose the rockets and hope to at least hurt him a little while I manually flew trying to get an edge. The tech-two launchers lit up the space around me sending little arrows of pain into the Rifter's shields. I knew that there was no way he had the maneuvering skills that I had. It was a matter of time before I worked myself into range.

Then a Wolf jumped into the belt. He must have come into system after Tyler engaged me. I cursed Tasha in my head and turned the Merlin to get distance from the Rifter. Now it was just a matter of who the Wolf pilot decided to engage. Of course, it was me.

As much as I hated it, all I could do was run. I engaged the aft thrusters and pointed toward planet one. As I maneuvered I overloaded the afterburners. The extra energy burned into the Cold-gas Arc Jets doubling the heat that the mechanical shielding normally absorbed. I could feel the burners heating up and the components start to singe.

The Wolf locked me and his cannons tore into my shields as I got painfully close to the 10 kilometers I figured I needed bring the navigation computer back online and warp. I hit 10 kilometers and engaged the warp drive seconds before the Wolf was in his own scram range.

While I was in warp I looked for the nearest celestial that was in line with planet one. You see, the easiest thing the navigation computer can do is warp to zero. It takes at least another second to change your coordinates to stop short of the planets gravitation field. I didn't figure Tyler knew this, but I was betting the Wolf pilot did. As soon as I came out of warp he would be behind me. If I didn't warp again fast he would lock me and this game would start again--minus one burned out afterburner.

I found an asteroid belt that was 30 degrees off the planet and waited to come out of warp. As I did I engaged the thrusters and pointed toward the belt. The Wolf came out of warp on top of me, just like I knew he would. I took one more second to figure out an approach path to the the belt that would bring me 70 kilometers short and hit the warp drive again. I could hear the target tone lock as I jumped into warp again.

This time when I came out of warp I pointed the ship toward my home station and engaged the drive again. The Wolf came out of warp at zero giving me time to turn the ship and accelerate to warp velocity. I warped back to the station with a very bruised ego and a burned out afterburner that was worth more than the ship I was flying. Tasha had really be in a shit-ton of trouble or I was going to be pissed.

Stupid fucking Rifters.